"Carolina Reaper" Declared Hottest Pepper on Earth

There's a new record holder in the Guinness Book, and it's not for the faint of heart. The owner of PuckerButt Pepper Company, Ed Currie (a.k.a. Smokin' Ed), got the nod for his "Carolina Reaper," which is now officially the most powerful chili pepper known to man.

The Carolina Reaper blew away the former record holder, the Trinadad Moruga Scorpion, which measured 1.2 million Scoville units. Currie's breed of pepper brings a total punch of 1,569,300 Scoville units. According to the Associated Press, genetics play a role in the fiery factor, in addition to where the pepper is grown. Currie's were grown on his farm in South Carolina.

Described by the Associated Press as "bumpy, oily, fire-engine red fruit," the scorching hot pepper was tested by students at Winthrop University as part of their undergraduate studies. The hottest batch was given the code name HP22B, as in "Higher Power, Pot No. 22, Plant B." While the batched averaged just over 1.5 million Scoville Units, one individual pepper in the group measured just over 2.2 million.

According to the Guinness Book, "The Scoville Unit (SHU) scale is a method of quantifying a substance's 'spiciness,' through determining the concentration of the chemical compounds responsible for the sensation, which are named capsaicinoids."

Posted by Kiri Tannenbaum

Kiri Tannenbaum is a contributing editor at Delish. Her love of food was sparked by an extended stay in Florence, Italy, where she assisted in the kitchen, shaving bittersweet chocolate over creamy, homemade tiramisu. Though she has no Italian blood in her lineage, Kiri always makes her sauce from scratch and hopes one day to adopt an Italian grandmother. Read More

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